


Duty to the Worms

by RockPaperbackScissors



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Gen, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Spacer (Mass Effect)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-01
Updated: 2016-12-01
Packaged: 2018-09-03 16:04:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8720110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RockPaperbackScissors/pseuds/RockPaperbackScissors
Summary: Someday, they would urge her to "take back Earth". They never asked if she believed that Earth was hers to begin with





	

_The water cycle._

She’d learned all about it in school, from holographic demonstrations in which simulated molecules—the holy trinity of H2O—sprang from the ocean, rollicked through the atmosphere, and tumbled back to the planet’s surface to bestow precious moisture on some picturesque, agrarian scene. It was a phenomenon essential to garden worlds, including Earth.

Her first visit to the planet yielded a different reality: feeble droplets pointlessly splattering on a gray concrete sidewalk.

“Can we go home, Mom?”

“This _is_ home. Home to all humanity.”

“It’s not home to me. Look—worms.”

“Don’t.” Her mother crouched abruptly so that their eyes were level. Her mother, who always insisted on tidiness and cleanliness, considered "home" to be in the damp and the dirt? “This is where we started. It doesn’t matter where we go—we can never forget where our duty lies.”

The worms pulsated. Duty? To this place? Why?

As they resumed their trudge through the rain, the water cycle continued to rotate in her mind: the rise, the float, the fall. She began to imagine each water molecule as a tiny ship: the oxygen atom as the hull, the hydrogen atoms as pudgy wings.

She feared that she could never love Earth as much as she was supposed to, but she took comfort in knowing that water couldn’t love Earth at all. But water was useful, and it was needed, and it didn’t complain when it had to come back. Maybe that was as much as she’d be able to hope for herself.


End file.
